Wednesday, May 25, 2011

A Summer Session Stream.

Online Pete told everyone in a BB discussion thread that he is enrolled in our class because he failed it at Small Low-Quality College. He heard Snarklepuss University is soooo much easier than SLQC. What a champ. (Or maybe I mean chump. Or chimp?)

Whenever I hear Bruno Mars on the radio, I think of Yaro in his clerical collar, rockin' out on his iPod.

During finals week, the frozen yogurt machine in the cafeteria was broken. Did you know this may have contributed to Sleepy Sally's poor performance on my final exam, as she NEEDS a fro-yo twice daily during exams week? (I asked her to bring a doctor's note.)

On average, what is the salary increase between Assistant Prof and Associate? Associate and Full? Just wondering when I'll catch up with my alums' salaries....

Oh, Kanazawa. Anyone familiar with the British system want to weigh in on the odds he and his racist, sexist ass will be on the fall job market?

8 comments:

On average? Like everything else having to do with faculty salaries, it varies a whole lot and is shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Back in the day, I got a 13.48% bump. At first that seemed beyond bizarre, but then when I got to the bottom of the letter, I realized that they wanted my post-tenure salary to be a nice round number and they calibrated my raise accordingly. But I also have friends who got nominal raises of 2 or 3K. It just depends. But here's hoping this means you'll be getting that bump, whatever its value, over the summer.

I can explain Kanazawa; there is an ancient belief among certain Japanese that they are "higher" than other nationalites in Asia or the world, that the Japanese are racially/culturally distinct because of their island background, and that the Japanese language cannot be spoken by foreigners without them losing/misunderstanding some essential Japanese-ness. This body of work is called "nihonjinron", and on certain points it is reminicent of the Anglo-Saxonism of certain rightist writers/intellectuals in the 19th century. So yes, Kanazawa is a schmuck, but his idiotic ideas have backing, not only in his home culture, but in the English-speaking world as well.

And given the fact that many of us are teaching summer classes, whether we like it or not, I'd guess that the misery will continue more or less unabated (and possibly intensified, thanks to the intense nature of summer sessions) for at least another month or two. There might be an early-to-mid-August lull, at which point anon will de-lurk and declare the page dead. It's nice to have traditions.

Strelnikov: While it's true that there are substantial racist discourses in modern Japanese culture (not really "ancient" though they invoke mythological and pseudo-historical arguments), and substantial pseudo-science purportedly backing it, that's not an explanation for him specifically. His training in evolutionary psychology -- one of the most pseudo-scientific, neo-racist fields currently in existence in the academy -- is much more important.

What Was This?

College Misery was a dysfunctional group blog where professors got the chance to release some of the frustration that built up while tending to student snowflakes, helicopter parents, money mad Deans, envious colleagues, and churlish chairpeople.

Our parent site, Rate Your Students, started in 2005, and we continued that mission beginning in 2010. Ben at Academic Water Torture and Kimmie at The Apoplectic Mizery Maker both ran support blogs during periods when this blog had died.